By VICKI URBANIK

In keeping with the policy shift now underway at the county’s budget hearings, the Porter County Commissioners on Tuesday reinstated compensatory time for all county employees.

Effective on or about Sept. 1, county employees will be granted paid days off for working more than their standard work week, which in most cases is a 35-hour week. The new policy applies to all county departments.

Under the new policy, employees will be asked to take their comp time in the first pay period that the hours accumulated, but they will have up to four pay periods to do so.

The policy was prompted by the Porter County Council, which is in the process of eliminating all overtime pay in next year’s budgets. Overtime costs have been soaring ever since February, when the council and commissioners agreed to ban comp time because some employees racked up an excessive amount of time off -- in some cases, two months or so.

The new policy attempts to prevent excessive comp time by imposing a timeframe for employees to use up their hours.

County Attorney Gwenn Rinkenberger said the new policy doesn’t address overtime, but noted that if there is no money for overtime, the issue is moot.

She also that it will be up to each department to monitor the comp time as it accumulates. Any hours not used up in the first pay period will roll over into the next, and any comp time accumulated in that second pay period will roll over into the next period if not used.

The former policy didn’t include a time restriction, but it did attempt to cap the hours accumulated, though county officials have said this provision was often not enforced. The new policy does not include language capping the hours.

In another matter, the commissioners passed a policy stating that employees at the Porter County Animal Shelter will be cross-trained to cover each others’ duties. Commissioner President Robert Harper said that’s been the practice at the shelter in the recent past, but that the policy puts that in writing.

Posted 8/20/2008